


Iridescence

by gaslightgallows (hearts_blood)



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M, Fantasizing, Guilty Pleasures, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-02 03:38:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5232494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_blood/pseuds/gaslightgallows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack leaves Phryne's parlour in an uncomfortable hurry. Follows 1x07, "Murder at Montparnasse".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Iridescence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WhenIWakeUp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhenIWakeUp/gifts).



> Prompt: “I’d like to read/know what happened after Jack left Phryne in 1x07. After seeing the painting he left quite in a hurry and instead of putting on his coat, it was placed rather… strategically.” :)
> 
> Also a thank you to Scientifact Twitter, for informing the world that “Men can get rid of an erection by sitting down and flexing their thigh muscles repeatedly.” This is important information. ;)

_I'll tell you what must seem strange, that when it's over you feel so extraordinarily pure. You feel like a disembodied spirit, immaterial; and you seem to be able to touch beauty as though it were a palpable thing; and you feel an intimate communion with the breeze, and with the trees breaking into leaf, and with the iridescence of the river. You feel like God.  
_ _– W. Somerset Maugham_

 

He felt her eyes on his face and tore his eyes from the painting with as much deliberate casualness as he could muster. “You’re blushing,” she said gently.

“I’m a grown man, Miss Fisher,” Jack said, with a shrug. “I’m not likely to blush at the sight of a little bare flesh.” It was a lie, of course. His complexion didn’t allow for easy blushing and so he could wave it off, but his cheeks were burning. And his trousers were becoming uncomfortable.

“That’s what surprises me, Detective Inspector,” Miss Fisher replied, still with that very gentle hint of humour. He raised his eyebrows politely in response. “In fact... lately... you’re full of surprises.”

“It’s all part of the job.” Even he heard the dangerous husky note entering his voice. Jack pulled his attention away from her searching, inviting gaze and glanced at his watch. “I have to get back to the station. Excuse me.”

He got up from where he had been altogether too comfortable on her parlour rug, and retrieved his hat and coat, folding the trench coat over his arm in such a way as to shield himself from prying eyes. All the while, he felt Miss Fisher watching him. Her face when he’d risen had been both slightly amused and slightly regretful, but her voice as she called out to him was all mirth. “Goodnight, then.”

Jack glanced at her briefly, realized it was a mistake, and looked away again at once. “Goodnight,” he replied, politely enough, and then raced for the safety of his car, all but flinging himself inside.

It wasn't the sight of her bare flesh that had threatened to undo him. He was an old married man and not at all innocent. No, it was the sight of _her_ , all of her, nude and abandoned, practically in the grip of ecstasy... and the thought of her as she must have been while the picture was first being sketched out, unburdened, free, poor, untrammeled by life...

Christ, how could it not undo him?

Even in the relative privacy of his car, he had to resist the urge to unbutton his fly and relieve the pressure on his groin. How long had it been since he’d been intimate with a woman? With anyone? He and his wife had been living apart for nearly three years, but there had been occasions, in the early days of their separation, when they had both succumbed to need and a familiar touch. But there’d been nothing like that recently, and if the last letter from Rosie’s solicitor had been any indication, there wouldn’t be anything like that ever again.

He jammed his hat onto his head but kept his coat over his thighs as he drove back to the station a little faster than was strictly necessary or legal. At every intersection, every time he had to bring the car to a stop to let traffic pass, he found himself clenching his thigh muscles, then relaxing them. The repetition seemed to help him ignore the throbbing erection between his legs, and even to lessen it, somewhat.

Jack kept repeating the action. All through the drive back to the station, all through the debriefing with Collins and the preliminary examination of Dubois’s body with the coroner and writing his report to the Chief Commissioner. He had to; every time he managed to think about something else for five minutes, his traitorous brain found a way to return to the image of that painting, and he was right back where he’d started. Twice that evening, he found himself with his hand halfway down his trousers without even realizing it, and flexed his thighs hard to divert the flow of blood. Once while in the lavatory, he looked down at his penis, saw that it was flaccid, and let out a sigh of relief… only for it to begin stiffening again the moment he sat back down at his desk, looked at his half-written report, and saw Phryne Fisher’s name.

He gave up. “Collin,” he half-snarled at the boy, left on desk duty for the night, “I’m off.”

“So early, sir? I—right you are, sir,” Hugh back-pedaled, seeing the look on his boss’s face. “Have-have a good night, sir.”

The look Jack gave his constable could have frozen beer.

He drove home in a steady shower of rain. It did nothing to calm him. There was another letter from his wife’s solicitor lying just inside the door, along with the month’s bills and a postcard from his cousin who was off somewhere in the bush on a photographic holiday while her boys were in school. Jack chucked them all onto the low table in the sitting room, along with his coat, hat, and jacket, on his way through to the bedroom.

It was the first good hard jerk he had permitted himself since meeting Phryne Fisher. He had known his marriage was on the rocks for some time and hadn’t really felt like indulging, even by himself, but ever since he had held her in his arms at the theater (briefly, professionally) and felt her body beneath his – _I was saving her life, damn it!_ – he had felt the stirrings of something, and as much as he had tried to avoid the emotions, they would not be denied. But at least he had been able to control them.

Now… now he had kissed Phryne Fisher, and seen her overcome one of her darkest fears and be fully prepared to kill a man, and seen her naked (painting or not, in more ways than one), all in the space of a few hours.

That was a lot to take in and still be expected to control himself, so he gave up. Jack stripped himself completely naked and fell into damp chilly sheets that were a shock to his fevered skin, and just let himself _go_.

He didn’t bother trying to fantasize about her. There were no hazy dreams of her naked in his arms or attempted at imagining what she might feel like around his cock. His mind was flooded, simply, with his own vivid memories of Phryne. At crime scenes, in his office, in her parlour. The sensuality of her being, solely in her everyday life, was so intense that part of him was scared to try and picture what she might be like in the bedroom. He almost didn’t need to know. Knowing her as she was had been enough to take him firmly by the balls, and besides, now he knew what her mouth tasted like, what her hair felt like through his fingers, what she smelled like up close underneath the expensive French perfume…

He climaxed so hard he actually arched off the bed, with a shout that left his throat hoarse for hours after. His vision went white, and pleasure flooded his brain and his veins so thoroughly that he felt for a moment like he was drifting through space… For a few warm, perfect seconds, everything was right with the universe and there was peace in his heart for the first time in so long…

His first thought, when he returned to earth, was a distant inkling that he was going to have a hard time meeting Miss Fisher’s eyes, the next time they met.

**Author's Note:**

> FYI, the next time they meet is in “Away With the Fairies,” where the first thing he sees upon her entrance is emphatically not her eyes. XD


End file.
